Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who has impressed so far in his temporary EU president role, said today (30 October) that he was not a candidate for the new permanent position to be created by the Lisbon Treaty.
Having been complimented by many for his latest diplomatic achievements at the EU summit, such as putting in place the Czech Lisbon treaty guarantees, Reinfeldt remained humble.
Asked by EurActiv whether he would stay on as Council president after 1 January 2010, Reinfeldt smiled and said: "Let me just say that I have an election on 19 September in Sweden which I don't intend to miss."
"And I would also want to be clear on one thing. I'm very happy that we got a decision on the Lisbon Treaty yesterday night [29 October]. But it's not ready yet. I've asked all my colleagues to respect this. We should await clarification on the Czech situation, and then we should move."
Reinfeldt appeared to confirm that the Swedish Presidency was preparing for an extraordinary summit, to be held as soon as the Czech Republic finalises its ratification and possibly on 13-14 November.
Juncker in the lead
With former British Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently out of the running (EurActiv 29/10/09), Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker now appears to be the leading candidate for the position.
Another strong contender, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, was apparently asked by his coalition partner, the Dutch Christian Democrats, not to leave national politics, as his departure would trigger the collapse of the government coalition and lead to early elections.
Foreign policy job tipped for a socialist
It is even less obvious at this stage who would be granted the position of High Representative for Foreign Policy, the second top job created by the Lisbon Treaty.
It has been agreed in principle that if a centre-right-affiliated politician becomes Council president, the high representative would be selected from the socialists' ranks. The socialists even set up a 'troika' to negotiate the job, consisting of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the president of the Party of European Socialists.
The Socialist group in the European Parliament also reportedly has a "shortlist" of candidates, namely Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, Romanian MEP Adrian Severin and three former foreign ministers, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Elisabeth Guigou of France and Alfred Gusenbauer of Austria.
But, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the summit, the candidates whose names are mentioned first are never the successful ones.
"Of course we discussed [top jobs] in the corridors," Sarkozy said. He added that the first "difficult" task would be to agree on who the Council president would be, and then start looking for a high representative.
"You can imagine that the political affiliations [and] the geographic origins must be complementary for these posts. We cannot conceive that the three posts would go to persons coming from the same region or the same political family," Sarkozy said.
